Powerful PowerPoint for Educators or Pthreads Programming

Powerful PowerPoint for Educators: Using Visual Basic for Applications to Make PowerPoint Interactive

Author: David M Marcovitz

Learn to use PowerPoint in ways you never thought possible. Marcovitz shows how, providing practical instruction for using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to create learning environments and educational materials that support and enhance student success. With the widespread availability of PowerPoint (every copy beginning with version 1997 comes with VBA built-in) schools have all the tools they need to create powerful and interactive multimedia resources.

Book review: Access 2002 for Dummies or Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Programming For Dummies

Pthreads Programming: Using POSIX Threads

Author: Bradford Nichols

Computers are just as busy as the rest of us nowadays. They have lots of tasks to do at once and need some cleverness to get them all done at the same time. That's why threads are becoming a new model for programming. Microsoft Windows NT, the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE), and many UNIX-based operating systems support threads. One advantage of most UNIX and DCE implementations is that they conform to a recently ratified POSIX standard (originally 1003.4a, now 1003.1c), which allows your programs to be portable between them. The POSIX threads standard, commonly known as Pthreads, is supported by most UNIX-based operating systems. With threads programming, multiple tasks run concurrently within the same program. They can share a single CPU as processes do or take advantage of multiple CPUs when available. They provide a clean way to divide the tasks of a program while sharing data. In this book you will learn when to use threads and how to make them efficient. The book delves into performance issues, comparing threads to processes, contrasting kernel threads to user threads, and showing how to measure speed. It describes in a simple, clear manner what all the advanced features are for and how threads interact with the rest of the UNIX system.

Booknews

Shows how to use the POSIX threads standard, discussing performance issues and how threads interact with the rest of the UNIX system, and comparing various types of threads. Subjects include basic design techniques, specialized synchronization techniques, UNIX libraries, measuring performance, and special considerations for DCE. Source code and examples are available electronically. For programmers. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Table of Contents:

	Preface
1	Why Threads?	1
2	Designing Threaded Programs	29
3	Synchronizing Pthreads	61
4	Managing Pthreads	109
5	Pthreads and UNIX	163
6	Practical Considerations	193
App. A	Pthreads and DCE	235
App. B	Pthreads Draft 4 vs. the Final Standard	243
App. C	Pthreads Quick Reference	249
	Index	261